Reason #27

I'm not actually keeping tabs (well, not on paper), but THIS just one more reason to move.

Jimmy Carter, I Love You!

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/losing-my-religion-for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html?page=-1

Moving news

Wooo! We have a hitch to haul our trailer now! Thanks, U-Haul. No thanks for the 3 1/2 hour wait, though. "It'll only take 2 hours." Riiiiiiight!

Now, all we have to do is rent a trailer in advance (next week), pack all of our stuff (next 3 weeks), ship the stuff that won't fit into a 5'4" x 8' trailer, clean the crap out of Grandpa's basement, have a "We're-moving-so-come-and-party PARTY", then load up and move. Oh, and somewhere in there I also have to take my final class at the University. A French class, no less. Ugh, I better not fail or I'll have to take another stab at it again next summer, and I won't be able to graduate for another year. Although, if I do that, I can potentially apply to be an intern (paid - yes!) for the Government of Ontario 3 times (if I don't make it the first time). There's only a 4% chance of getting hired. So 3 x 4% = a 12% chance!

Tattoo news

Well, it's official. Emma and I have finished all of our tattoo work (maybe a quick touch-up for both of us before we move to Ontario). It's going to be at least a year until either one of us can afford another big piece, and more big pieces there will be! Emma has ideas for the back of her neck, both of her upper legs, and both sides of her ribs. Unfortunately, I only have ideas for one of my legs, and my back. Although, I'd really love to one day, I don't think I could ever get my ribs done. Oh, the pain! We'll see, though, I might be left with no other options once I've tattooed every other inch of my body (minus my face - gah!).

Also, I finally took the plunge and emailed Bobby Henderson, of FSM fame, about my Holy Trinity tattoo. This is it here:

AND HE DIDN'T SUE ME! Phew.

http://www.venganza.org/2009/07/13/fsm-ipu-jesus/

Tentative moving date

As the title suggests, we have nailed down the week in which we U-Haul our asses down to Toronto. We predict that sometime in the 3rd week of August (16th-22nd) is when we'll leave. I finish the final class for my degree on the 13th, and I'd like for my Grandpa to be back from a family reunion before we take off (can't just up and leave without saying goodbye to your Grandpa who's just let you live with him for months, and who's totally awesome in general). So mark it on your calendar, folks! Unless you hate us. If that's the case, maybe a smiley face or a big X can mark the day of celebration for you.

I think before we head off, we'll have a going away shindig. I'm sure I'll cry like the big wuss I am (a bit teary eyed just typing this). I think we'll plan a party for the weekend just before the 16th - Saturday the 15th, sounds like a good date.

A Gay Ol' Time!

Well, since we've gotten back from our honeymoon it's been less hectic, but still quite busy. This weekend we ferret-sat Goose for Katie and Matthias. It ended up being a bloody fantastic weekend for this as it was also the same weekend as Edmonton's Pride Parade. 

Here's GOOSEY!

And here's queers on floats!

And queens in the streets!

And Linda Duncan blowing my wife a kiss! Oi, that's my woman, Duncan! Heh.

Pride week festivities are happening all week, and we plan to go to a cabaret at Play once we've gourged ourselves at the Father's Day Buffet at Padmanadi. 

Honeymoon - Day 5 & 6

For our final two days we tried to get in a fair bit of antique shopping. We headed to the Curious Cat Antique Mall on both Friday and Saturday (as it's so bloody huge and full of a ton of great stuff). We ended up finding a Father's Day gift for Emma's dad, a salt and pepper shaker with a holder made in 1960's Japan (which goes great with our red chrome kitchen table), a wall hanger with a sexy French pip-up lady on it and a cute juice glass pitcher with cherries on it! 

After Curious Cat on Friday we met with my cousin, Grahame, at the Ship & Anchor for some drinks and food, before heading to the Fairytales Film Festival to see I Can't Think Straight. For anyone who may want to see this movie, DON'T. It's atrocious. Unless you're like us and enjoy the atrociousness of things sometimes. The acting is beyond bad and the movie can't decide if it wants to be a comedy or a dramatic social commentary piece. It fails at both. Methinks, it would make for a great drinking game, though.

On Saturday, we went back to the antique mall before making our way back to Edmonton, and just in time to miss that bit of snow that Calgary got on the weekend. As we were heading back, Emma received a call from Miles at Lucky Strike Tattoo asking if she could make it in earlier. I figured since we were going to be a bit early anyway, I might as well step on the gas and make the appointment an hour earlier so we could get home to see our doggy. We made it from Calgary to Edmonton in just over 2 hours. We grabbed some Wok Box (best fast food in Edmonton!), ate in the car and made it to the appointment in time. It ended up working out perfectly. We even snuck in some Rockband later that night with Tonya and Adina.

Honeymoon - Day 4

We woke up far too early to head to Banff. 8:30 AM early. Ugh. Despite waking up so early we didn't make it to Banff until 1pm. That free internet is so enticing. Once we arrived it was time for lunch. We headed over to Wild Flour first. Unfortunately, all of their food was pre-made and everything had cheese or some sort of diary product on it, and since I didn't want to spend the rest of the trip holding Emma's hair while she vomited we went to Nourish Vegetarian Bistro and Tea House. It was a lot pricier but worth it. 

After lunch we hopped on the gondola ride up Sulphur Mountain. I say "hopped" like it was no big deal when, in fact, we were terrified and thought with every little bump that we were going to die. See picture below for my "I'm not terrified - this is fun, I swear" look. 

We trekked to the very top of that damn mountain, once we were out of that god forsaken gondola just to avoid the ride down the mountain. We were followed by some awesome Australians who kept calling all of the chipmunks "turkeys". "Get back here you little turkeys!" is what they kept saying. They were trying to get a decent shot of them all. Here's my picture of one of those damn turkeys.

Once we arrived back at our rented condo, we had a very long nap before heading out to Tubby Dog. We both had the Not Dog with various topping. I did get mine with some cheese, and we shared a whack of yam fries. As a heads up for anyone who goes to Tubby Dog: the put a lot of toppings on the dogs, and if you order yam fries it comes on a fricken' lunch tray! Two or three people can share one order. I was so damn full that I didn't eat breakfast the next morning.

Honeymoon - Day 3

For our 3rd day, we went to Buddha's Vegetarian Restaurant for some excellent food. I'd still recommend Padmanadi Vegetarian Restaurant in Edmonton over it, though. We had the mixed vegetable chow mein, veggie chicken filet with broccoli and the satay veggie beef & eggplant hotpot. Both the chicken filet with broccoli and hotpot were fantastic (plus the portions were decent). The noodles were weird and kind of bland, but then again I'm not a huge fan of noodles. We, also, stopped at Cat's Eye, a vintage clothing shop. It was crazy full of stuff. Frankly, we didn't have enough time to even skim the surface. Emma did buy a belt for $3, though!

The best part of the day was finally seeing Drag Me To Hell. If you haven't seen it: GO! It's so rad. So much vomit! I'm so glad Sam Raimi did this instead of Spiderman 4 (oh, don't worry rumours are that Spiderman 4 should be here around 2011). To end the day, we watched some downloaded Ashes To Ashes. I love me some Gene Hunt.

Honeymoon - Day 1 & 2

We stayed at my cousin's, Grahame, place on Sunday night so we could get a start to our honeymoon ASAP. When we woke up (6am, ugh!), we went to the unbelievably cute, Diary Lane Cafe. Emma had the tofu scramble and I had the french toast with cream cheese and berry compote. Both were fantastic. Hopefully, we'll make it there again before we leave for Toronto.

Then we drove to the Kensington area to get the keys to the condo we rented for 6 days (only $250!). Also, internet fucking access! Omigod, a dream come true. A week with full internet access and we can download tv shows and watch them right here! Awesome. We've been deprived of our beloved internets for some time now thanks to the impossibility of decent access out in the boonies.

Here's a couple pictures of the condo we stayed at:

The next thing on our list after setting up the computers was a long nap. A 3 hour nap to be precise. It was amazing. In all the time we've been here I've slept better here (with constant city noise) than I have in the last 2 months. After the much needed nap we checked out the shops in Kensington, and scored a butt-load of awesome consignment clothes (mostly from Trend Fashions)! We did basically the same thing on Tuesday, except we went to 17th Avenue SW (Calgary's much cooler equivalent of Edmonton's Whyte Ave). We easily could have bought a ton of stuff, but we exercised some restraint (Emma mostly), and I only bought the dress below (albeit mine's a bit different - it has a halter top instead) from Blame Betty and shoes to match. Actually, the shoes came first. The dress was fate. I usually think fate is a bunch of hoo-ha, but not when it comes to fashion. 

While on 17th Ave we went to The Coup for lunch which we highly recommend, and we visited Bird Dog Video to rent Time Crimes. P.S. Never time travel and do everything wrong! Another great find was A Little More Interesting, where I made a fool of myself by turning on sex toys and then not knowing how to turn them off, and having to ask the sales associate there to show me how. They sell the best lube ever! Cheesecake flavoured ones! Brilliant. Who doesn't love cheesecake?

A Wedding and a Honeymoon

We did it!

On May 30th, Emma and I got hitched. It was bloody terrific. I never thought weddings could be so much fun, but we were determined to make it our own with a moustache hula hoop ceremony, a Padmanadi buffet and karaoke.

The ceremony was short and sweet, and I ended up crying which was incredibly embarrassing. Luckily, I was able to compose myself just in time to lose the hula hoop contest. 

This meant that I became "the groom" and had to don a moustache. Our marriage commissioner, Howard Saunders, was utterly fantastic. He let us write our ceremony, and agreed to read it even though it was a bit on the side of ridiculous. Also, he's British! Hence, it all sounded very lovely and classier than it was. 

Here's a couple more photos from our lovely friend, Shirley Tse:

For our honeymoon we hit the road, and headed for Calgary. More to follow on that in the upcoming days.

Weddings are a blood, sweat and tears marathon, my friend. Well, minus the blood and tears, I hope.

Holy moly! Weddings are hard! Well, maybe not hard but definitely very busy, and if I don't end up a little bit sleep deprived I'll be throughly surprised. This is why people take honeymoons right after the wedding, I suppose. You need that time to decompress.

Oh! We finally perfected our wedding cupcakes (after 3 trial runs) and this is it:

Simple, but at least it's not a cupcake wreck like the last ones we tried. Tonya did say it looked "boob-ish" but we're okay with that - I mean, it is a lady + lady wedding.

Preparations

It's officially under 2 weeks until the wedding! And, man, we have a lot to get done. I've made lists upon lists of things to do, and then I always seem to lose those lists and just go off the top of my head. I guess we'll see what we get accomplished this weekend. At least we've finished the inevitable mess of the seating arrangement. All the table now have "font names" like Cracked or Garamond. We figure it's more fun to announce these names instead of table 1 or table 2. Here's Emma preparing our signs for the highways. We also made our own gift box. DIY weddings are a blast!

This is going to be the best gay bash of the year! Take that Toronto Pride Parade! Really, I'm just saying this so I don't get too upset that we'll be missing it. Plus, the Edmonton Pride Parade always has those couple of protesters that get humiliated by the overwhelming amount of queers that try to hug them. Heh. That's always fun to watch. We'll get to see it all one last time before we head out East. 

Speaking of out East, I've compiled a list (oh, how I love lists) of things that I can't wait to do or try out upon our arrival:

- Good Food Box - Ontario-grown food, organic (if you want), and a variety of fruits and vegetables depending on what's in season.

- Riding my bike or walking pretty much everywhere.

- Never missing a great band because they just don't come to your city (*cough* Patrick Wolf )

- Never missing great movies because they don't play in your city, and then having to order them online just to see them.

- So many great vegan/vegetarian friendly restaurants.

- Records, records, records! And cheap ones at that.

- More than 2 good festivals per year.

- A less insane and bigoted government that the one in Alberta.

- The sheer number of Jesus fish on people's cars is likely to decrease.

- The humidity is bound to do amazing things for my hair and skin. Keep my tattoos from drying out every other day.

- An effective and far-reaching transit system. I'm selling my stupid car as soon as we're settled.

- A city that's not afraid to use graffiti on it's buildings. Here's a perfect example: 

- Hang out with Kelly! And many of the other cool people in Toronto.

- Eat sushi more than twice a month. Here we come cheap sushi buffets!

That's all I can think of at the moment but, trust me, there's many more reasons.

Ooops!

Uh, so I ended up getting my proper income tax refund. It seems I'm the monkey (obviously, the shit-flinging one). It's bizarre that I received 2 cheques, though. Not that I'm complaining but you think they'd just send it all at once.

Even though, I got the money to take my spring class we've already booked our Calgary trip so I'll take it in August. Frankly, I'm relieved. This means I can help out for that whole week before the wedding instead of worrying about having a mid-term on the Monday after the wedding bash.

Speaking of the wedding, it's only 17 days away! Huzzah!

Hahahahahahaha!

Mr. Buns with a blue/purple mohawk:

Tattoo Tuesday

As I type this Emma is getting tattooed by the extremely talented Shawn O'Connor at Ink Machine. I think this is one of the reasons to stay in Edmonton - the abundance of great tattoo artists. We've been lucky to get some great work by Shawn, Miles Kanne of Lucky Strike, Lee Conklin at Crimson Empire, and even a little neck tattoo by Kevin at Urge 2. Unfortunately, Toronto has close to nothing for great tattoo shops, so every time we end up back in Edmonton we'll have to get some work done. Or there's always Montreal. 

Also at the moment, Mr. Buns and Finnigan (my mom's dog) are getting their spring haircuts, and Mr. Buns is getting his mohawk dyed! Blue! We're hoping it comes out more of a purple-ish colour but blue is still pretty cool. I'll post pictures once it's all done. I'm really excited for this grooming because, lately, Mr. Buns has taken to burying his bones in shit. Yup, good ol' shit. I don't know where he's finding it, and it doesn't smell like other dog poop so I'm guessing he found a pile of manure somewhere in Grandpa's garden.

But enough of tattoo and doggie talk - yesterday, I got my Canadian Income Tax refund. I sent it in on Netfile and it said I'd be getting somewhere close to $900 back. To my surprise, it was... $67 (and that's rounding it up)! What the hell? How do you go from $900 to $67? Monkeys could do better math! And, perhaps, they do:

Well, there went all of my plans to take my French 112 course at the U of A in a couple weeks. Now I have to wait until the summer course in July. I can afford the $700 then. So, since Emma and I can't move until I finish that course in mid-August we've decided to go on a brief honeymoon in Calgary a day or two after the wedding.  If anyone knows of some cheap accommodations please let us know. Currently, we're looking at renting out a condo for a week. Slightly cheaper than hotels and we can make our own food! Personally, I just can't wait to get away from the constant amounts of people around. Emma and I can finally just sit and peruse the interwebs, and not worry about being interrupted by company or seeming lazy (for those who don't know - we are living with my Grandfather for the moment which is a great way to save money for the wedding, and we helped him out after his car crash, but it's a bit tough living back at home after you haven't lived there in probably 4 or 5 years). Oh, also The Dears play in Calgary on June 2! Hence, good reason to go!

One Fine Weekend

Had an excellent weekend. We went into Edmonton to pick up some groceries and horribly cheesy horror flicks for a fun-filled Saturday evening full of food and bad dialogue.

While in town we stopped at Planet Organic and picked up this:

Gluten free cookie dough ice cream made with coconut milk! So delicious, but also $8 for this tiny container. Well worth it in my opinion.

We then visited The Lobby on Whyte Ave. and picked up The Re-Animator and Troll 2 (apparently the " best worst movie" ever). Not soon after, Katie and Matthias came over so we could eat some BBQed deliciousness. Emma and I made some firm tofu marinated in Braggs on a bun with melted cheese and avocado. It was tofu heaven. Almost tasted like chicken - but, then again, I haven't had chicken in quite awhile. I'll have to try it again without a couple of girly drinks clouding my judgement.

As for the movies, they were terrible and I loved every damn second of them. Here's a link to a trailer of Troll 2:

Looks awesome, doesn't it? Feel good movie of the year. The year 1990, that is. The real trailer is here.

These are just a few things I learnt from Troll 2:

- Never trust vegetarians
- Always carry a "double decker balogna sandwich" in your backpack
- Sex = Popcorn
- An apple a day makes you goblin pate
- Nilbog is goblin backwards.
- Grandfathers and grandsons bond over molotov cocktails
- They're eating her! Then they're going to eat me! Oh my Gooooooooooood!

Hopefully, once we move to Toronto we can find a theatre that plays it once or twice a year. The upcoming documentary actually looks quite good.

Tonight we actually plan to watch some decent DVDs: House Season 2 and Man on Wire. Man on Wire should be rad, and House is always fantastic.

P.S. For Tonya - have a blast in Winnipeg! And avoid any confrontations with squirrels.

Blogger Time!

I figure it's about time for a "real" blog (can't do Livejournal from this damn phone, not to mention the useless posts from LJ communities) Also, there's not much to do out in the middle of nowhere, and when Emma and I move to Toronto we have to keep the Edmonton folk updated on our big city adventures. So here we go.